Top military medals

Medal of Honor: The highest military decoration awarded by the United States. To members of the armed forces for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.”

Distinguished Service Cross (Army), Navy Cross (Navy, Marines and Coast Guard), Air Force Cross: For extraordinary heroism not justifying an award of the Medal of Honor.

Silver Star: Third-highest combat military decoration, for heroism against an enemy of the United States.

Defense officials are looking at the feasibility of expanding the website to include pre-9/11 medals, said spokeswoman Eileen Lainez. But, she added, it would be “premature to speculate” if that will happen.

As for the disclaimer, Lainez said it’s necessary because the website can’t supply enough information — such as birthday or Social Security number — to properly identify people with common last names, such as the John Smiths and Jason Joneses of the world.

She added the list will always be incomplete because classified awards won’t be posted and service members can request to have their names removed.

Tobias Naegele, editor-in-chief of the Military Times newspaper chain, called the Pentagon’s effort “a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound.”

His organization, publisher of the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marine Corps Times weekly newspapers, runs probably the most comprehensive online medals database. Called Hall of Valor, the free archive holds nearly 105,000 U.S. military medal records, many with citations. It also includes the Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross.

Naegele had few kind words for the Pentagon’s effort, in comparison. “It is below the bare minimum of what they could do,” he said. “They put up a shell of a site. It’s meaningless.”

His hope is that the Defense Department will anoint Hall of Valor as the official database and use its records to help expand the archive to cover all valor awards and the Purple Heart, the medal awarded for wartime injuries.

Military Times estimates that 350,000 U.S. medals have been awarded above the Bronze Star level.

“Conceptually, that is where we’d like to go,” Naegele said, though he added that there has been no official conversation with the Defense Department about it.

Parent company Gannett bought its database in 2008 from Doug Sterner, who with his wife had built it largely as a labor of love for a decade. Sterner stayed on as the Hall of Valor curator and continues to expand the archive

Sterner said he probably fires off 50 Freedom of Information Act request letters to the military each week. That’s how he has accumulated the rich trove of records, in addition to people sending him their own citations to add.

He calls the Pentagon’s effort a good first step.

“What they did when they started this database was take a giant leap,” said Sterner, who has long lobbied the military for this action. “We got the immovable object to move. Now we’ve got to keep it moving the right direction.”